Find your very own Juiblex the Faceless Lord of Slimes and Oozes in the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide Campaigns chapter

Chapter 5 of the new Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide is all about Campaigns. "Be a Dungeon Master," they say. "It rocks." I can attest: It certainly does. This is another meaty chapter talking about high-level dungeon mastering, while still trying to make the process of dungeon mastering more accessible to all. But we're getting deep into the weeds in this video. We're well beyond Starter Kit material here. The Campaigns chapter talks all about:

• Developing a campaign ("Fun and engaging! Rich and deep!")
  • Have a conversation with your players about what type of campaign you want to run.
  • What sort of vibe (themes, tone, flavor) are you all going for? High fantasy? Horror?
  • What conflicts will drive the campaign?
    • Who are the villains?
    • What are they up to?
    • How will your players throw a monkey wrench into those gears?
    • How will your players get drawn in?
• Thinking about your campaign in terms of what the players expect from it, and what the characters will be doing—at least in the beginning.
  • Because players' and characters' motivations and needs will likely change and evolve as a campaign carries on.
  • One conflict or another may be ejected in favor of a new one.
• How does a Dungeon Master set up the players to encounter the campaign setting?
  • What events lead to other events?
  • But don't plan too far ahead.
  • Because stuff happens. Things are subject to change.
• How and when to wrap up a campaign.
  • Not all campaigns have to last forever. 
    • Some can be short and tight.
    • Others can last for years.
• Keeping your notes organized.
  • Samples of tracking sheets are in the DM's Guide.
    • Campaign Journal. A session tracker. Notes for what's coming up this session, what's happening during this session.
    • NPC Tracker. Perhaps you created someone on the fly, but your players are now doting over them and bringing them along for the ride. 
    • DM's Character Tracker. Keeping tabs on each player and their character. In a standalone adventure, you might not see much character growth. In a campaign, you can explore that depth.
    • Campaign Conflicts Tracker. Try to think of three. It's sometimes nice to switch tracks. Perhaps having a good NPC go bad, or a bad NPC go good.

Lead Designer (and recently promoted to Creative Director) Chris Perkins is one of the best to ever assume the role of Dungeon Master. At most, he's thinking two or three adventures ahead. With his own homebrew games, it's unlikely he's mapping out a full 224-page store-bought adventure like Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen. Though there is a guide giving you a rundown of D&D 5e's previously published adventures. Quite helpful, since each published adventure is doing something different from the others. A couple sentences whetting your appetite is welcome. 

Having trouble coming up with conflicts of your own? The DM's Guide is here to help with examples. Perhaps you know you want to run, for example, a supernatural horror campaign. Here's a conflict:

Juiblex, The Faceless Lord, Lord of Slimes and Oozes, oozes out of the Abyss and into the Underdark. The characters hear from subterranean folks who need help defeating the demon lord and his minions.

Here's another. This one dealing with the School of Necromancy.

Vampires open a college of necromancy who need fresh corpses for their studies. An order of vampire hunters seeks the characters' help.

Or maybe you're running a swashbuckling campaign.

Inherited Antagonists. A character inherits a magic item from a deceased relative, unaware that this relative's enemies are after the item.

There are lots of examples tied to specific types of campaigns. There's also advice for taking published adventures and campaigns and making them your own. This chapter on Campaigns also dispenses advice on sitting down with your group in a Session 0, coming up with links between characters, a home base, a prominent friend the players all trust and like, friendly resources to draw upon, creating "likable villains" that they want to fight over and over again, one-off take-a-break episodes sprinkled into your campaign.

Interviewer Todd Kenreck blows my mind with this suggestion: There is a Bag of Devouring that swallows the players. Inside is a pocket dimension where everything operates like 1st Edition D&D. "Everything kills you, hard rains, bad weather." 

The inclusion of a Greyhawk campaign in this DM's Guide clearly speaks to this Campaigns chapter. This setting is meant for old and new dungeon masters alike. Take what you need. Leave what you don't. Run everything as written, or change it all up. You can even change the name from Greyhawk to, say, Blackswan or  Blueheron or Whitecockatoo. Please change your Greyhawk campaign to Whitecockatoo and tell me how it goes.

There are, finally, tips on how to end a campaign. There can be both planned  and unplanned endings. Perhaps two of your players are suddenly moving away, and you need to conclude things more quickly than expected. Whether by force or design, players will have a say in how things end. Your players have a lot invested in this campaign, too. They even talk about the Dungeon Master ending or handing off a campaign to another player because, frankly, the current DM is exhausted. DM burnout is real.

The D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide launches November 12. The 2024 Player's Handbook launched September 17—we reviewed it here.